4

HYMN TO THE DEVIL

And well thy images thou canst frame,
On canvass of pride, with pencil of flame:
A broad demesne is a view of glory,
For praying a soul from purgatory:
And, O, let the dame be fervent and fair,
Amorous, and righteous, and husband beware!
For there's a confession so often repeated,
The eyes are enlightened, the life-blood is heated.
Hish-Hush!-soft foot and silence,

The sons of the abbot are lords of the Highlands.
Thou canst make lubbard and lighthead agree,
Wallow a while, and come home to thee.
Speed thee, speed thee, &c.

Where goest thou next, by hamlet or shore,
When kings, when warriors, and priests are o'er ?
These for thee have the most to do,

And these are the men must be looked unto.

On courtier deign not to look down,

Who swells at a smile, and faints at a frown,
With noble maid stay not to parle,

But give her one glance of the golden arle.
Then, oh, there's a creature thou needs must see,
Upright, and saintly, and stern is she!

'Tis the old maid, with visage demure,
With cat on her lap, and dogs on the floor.
Master, she'll prove a match for thee,

With her psalter, and crosier, and Ave Mari.
Move her with things above and below,
Tickle her, and teaze her from lip to toe;
Should all prove vain, and nothing can move;
If dead to ambition, and cold to love,
One passion still success will crown,
A glorious energy all thine own!
'Tis envy; a die that never can fail
With children, matron, or maiden stale.
Show them in dreams from night to day
A happy mother, and offspring gay;
Show them the maiden in youthful prime,
Followed and wooed, improving her time;
And their hearts will sicken with envy and spleen,

A leperous jaundice of yellow and green :

And though frightened for hell to a boundless degree,
They'll singe their dry periwigs yet with thee.

Speed thee, speed thee, &c.

HYMN TO THE DEVIL.

Where goest thou next? Where wilt thou hie thee?
Still there is rubbish enough to try thee.

Whisper the matron of lordly fame,

There's a greater than she in splendour and name;
And her bosom shall swell with the grievous load,
And torrents of slander shall volley abroad,
Imbued with venom and bitter despair;

O sweet are the sounds to the Prince of the Air!
Reach the proud yeoman a bang with a spear,
And the tippling burgess a yerk on the ear;
Put fees in the eye of the poisoning leech,
And give the dull peasant a kick on the breech:
As for the flush maiden, the rosy elf,

You may pass her by, she will dream of herself.
But that all may be gain and nothing loss,
Keep eye on the men with the cowl and the cross;
Then shall the world go swimming before thee,
In a full tide of liberty, license, and glory.
Speed thee, speed thee, &c.

Hail, patriot spirit! thy labours be blest!
For of all great reformers, thyself wert the first:
Thou wert the first, with discernment strong,
To perceive that all rights divine were wrong;
And long hast thou spent thy sovereign breath,
In heaven above, and in earth beneath,
And roared it from thy burning throne,
The glory of independence alone;

Proclaiming to all, with fervour and irony,
That kingly dominion's all humbug and tyranny;
And whoso listeth may be free,

For freedom, full freedom's the word with thee;
That life has its pleasures-the rest is a sham,
And all that comes after a flim and a flam!
Speed thee, speed thee!

Liberty lead thee!

Many this night shall hearken and heed thee.
Hie abroad,
Demigod !

Who shall defame thee?

King of the Elements! how shall we name thee?

North. Delicious, James-delicious! That's above Barry Cornwall.

Shepherd. Him, indeed! Why, Mr North, he daur nae

5

6

BARRY CORNWALL-COLTON.

mair speak o' the deevil in that gate,' than tak the Sun by the horns when he has entered Taurus.

North. Admirably spoken, most astronomical of Chaldeans. Shepherd. I ken as muckle about the heathen mythology as Barry Cornwall does; but wha ever hears me taking ony o' their names in vain? It's a great sign o' weakness in ony poet o' the present day to be rinnin awa back into antiquity, when there's sae strong a spirit of life hotchin2 ower yearth and sea in this very century.

North. Barry Cornwall is one of my pet poets-quite a love; he is so free from everything like affectation. I see, in the Autographs of the Living Poets, in Watts's Souvenir, first, Barry Cornwall, and immediately after that immortal name, B. W. Procter-no more like each other than a pea and a bean. What think you of that? Who is B. W. Procter? This is rather too much.

Shepherd. It's just maist intolerable impertinence. What right has he to tak up the room o' twa autographs for his ain share? But wha's C. Colton? I see his name in the Literary Souvenir.

North. Author of Lacon, or, Many Things in Few Words; a work that is advertised to be in the thirteenth edition, and I never have seen any man who has seen a copy of it. I begin to doubt its existence.

Shepherd. Nae beuk ever went into a real, even-down, bonny fide thretteen edition in this world, forbye the Bible, Shakspeare, and John Bunyan. It's a confounded lie-and that's "mony things in few words."

North. Colton is a clergyman and a bankrupt wine-merchant, and E. O. player, a dicer, and friend of the late W. Weare, Esq., murdered by that atrocious Whig, Jack Thurtell. Shepherd. Huts!

North. Poz. Ever since his disappearance, laudatory paragraphs about this living and absent poet, evidently sent by himself to the gentlemen of the press, have been infesting the public prints-all puffs of Lacon! Let him show himself once more in London, and then I have a few words to whisper publicly into the ear of the Rev. C. Colton, author of Hypocrisy, a Satire, &c.

Shepherd. What for are you lookin so fierce and fearsome ? 2 Hotchin-heaving up and down.

1 Gate-manner.

KNIGHT'S QUARTERLY.

But let's change the subject. Wad ye advise me to read High-ways and Bye-ways?

North. Yes, James. They are very spirited and amusing volumes, written by a gentleman and a scholar. Grattan is a fine fellow-a Whig to be sure-but every man has his failing-and I cannot but like him for his very name.

1

Shepherd. I thocht he would be a good author, for I saw him abused like a tinkler in that feckless fouter, Taylor.2

North. Of course he writes for Colburn.3

5

Shepherd. Hech, sirs! but that's awfu' mean—but I was jalousin* as much. Oh! Mr North-my dear freen', I was sorry sorry when Knight's Quarterly Magazine took a pain in its head, and gied a wamle ower the counter in the deadthraws. It was rather incomprehensible to me, for the maist part, wi' its Italian literature, and the lave o't; but the contributors were a set o' spunkie chiels-Collegians, as I understan', frae Cambridge College. What's become o' them now that their Journal is dead?

6

North. I think I see them, like so many resurrection-men, digging up the Album. Yes! Hogg, they are clever, accomplished chaps, with many little pleasing impertinencies of their own, and may make a figure. How assinine, not to have marched a levy en masse into Ebony's sanctum sanc

torum!

Shepherd. I never thocht o' that before. So it was. But then ye behave sae cavalierly to contributors! It's a horrible thing to be buried alive in the Balaam Box!"

North. By the way, James, that Ode to the Devil of yours makes me ask you, if you have seen Dr Hibbert's book on Apparitions ?8

Shepherd. Ghosts ?-no. Is't gude?

North. Excellent. The Doctor first gives a general view

1 Thomas Colley Grattan published several works of fiction; and for some years was British Consul at Boston, U.S.

2 Feckless fouter-feeble rascal. Taylor and Hessey were the publishers of the London Magazine.

3 Colburn was the publisher of a rival magazine, the New Monthly.

4 Jalousin-suspecting.

5 Dead-thraws-agonies of death.

6 Among these collegians were Macaulay and Praed.

7 The depository of rejected contributions.

8 Sketches of the Philosophy of Apparitions; or, an Attempt to trace such Illusions to their Physical Causes. By SAMUEL HIBBERT, M.D., F.R.S.E.

8

HIBBERT ON APPARITIONS.

of the particular morbid affections with which the production of phantoms is often connected.

Shepherd. What-the blude and stomach?

North. Just so, James. Apparitions are likewise considered by him as nothing more than ideas, or the recollected images of the mind, which have been rendered more vivid than actual impressions.

Shepherd. Does the Doctor daur to say that there are nae real ghosts? If sae, he needna come out to Ettrick. I've heard that failosophers say there is nae satisfactory evidence of the existence of flesh-and-blude men (rax1 me ower the loaf, I want a shave2), but o' the existence o' ghosts and fairies I never heard before that the proof was counted defective. I've seen scores o' them, baith drunk and sober.

North. Well, Hogg versus Hibbert. Sam very ingeniously points out that, in well-authenticated ghost-stories, of a supposed supernatural character, the ideas which are rendered so unduly intense, as to induce spectral illusions, may be traced to such fantastical agents of prior belief, as are incorporated in the various systems of superstition, which for ages possessed the minds of the vulgar.

Shepherd. There may be some sense in that, after a'. What mair does the Doctor say?

North. Why, James, my friend Hibbert is something of a metaphysician, although he pins his faith too slavishly on some peculiar dogmas of the late Dr Brown.3

Shepherd. Metafeesics are ae thing, and poetry anither; but Dr Brown was a desperate bad poet, Mr North, and it would tak some trouble to convince me that he knew muckle about human nature, either the quick or the dead.

North. James, you are mistaken. However, my friend Hibbert well observes, that since apparitions are ideas equaling or exceeding in vividness actual impressions, there ought to be some important and definite laws of the mind which have given rise to this undue degree of violence. These he undertakes to explain, and he does so-with the qualification I mention-ingeniously, and even satisfactorily.

Shepherd. That's a'thegither aboon my capacity. What

1 Rax-reach.

2 Shave-slice.

3 The immediate predecessor of Professor Wilson in the chair of Moral Philosophy in the University of Edinburgh; born in 1778, died in 1820.